Speaker Andrew Scheer may have struck a blow for backbenchers’ rights with his ruling on Mark Warawa’s freedom to address the House in defiance of his party whip, but he spoiled a lot of fun and a popular line of opposition attack in the offing.

In an intricately nuanced ruling, Mr. Scheer has reinforced the power of the Speaker’s office and, by implication, that of backbenchers, at the expense of party whips.

He ruled that Mr. Warawa’s case did not represent a prima facie breach of privilege because the MP could have stood and caught the eye of the Speaker at any time. The MP for Langley said he was told by the Conservative whip that he was not permitted to make his members’ statement because “the topic was not approved.”

But Mr. Scheer cited numerous references that made clear he does not consider the Speaker has ceded his authority to whips just because he consults party lists to determine which MPs should be called upon.

He quoted the memoirs of former speaker James Jerome, who said he was comfortable using the party’s list “so long as it didn’t unfairly squeeze out their backbench.”

The Speaker ruled that nothing prevents backbenchers from addressing the House if they choose. All they have to do is rise in their place and signal that they’d like the floor. He doesn’t have to recognize them, but he can if he chooses. Thus the approved list of speakers, provided by party whips as a way of controlling the message, can be circumvented. Now backbenchers just need to gather the nerve to try it out.

But the confrontation between Warawa and his band of supporters on one side, and the Conservative ruling apparatus on the other, made it all but impossible for the opposition to raise that old canard about the government having a secret plan to abduct a “woman’s right to choose” and steal off into the night, never to be seen again.

It’s a drum they’ve been beating since before Stephen Harper even became prime minister. You may recall the ad campaign unleashed by the Liberals under Paul Martin, which warned that poor innocent Canadian women would be left to suffer in pain, banned from obtaining abortions once Tory morality police gained office.

What has become clear is that a substantial faction of the Conservative caucus feels very strongly about abortion, to the point it is willing to challenge the prime minister and jeopardize their own standing within caucus.

Michael Ignatieff had another go at it during his term as Liberal leader, after Mr. Harper announced that Canada’s overseas aid activities would take a greater focus on the health of mothers and children. Liberals quickly claimed that what Tories really wanted to do was block helpless women in developing countries from getting abortions.

“We don’t want to have women dying because of botched procedures. We don’t want to have women dying in misery,” Ignatieff told reporters Tuesday after Parliament Hill meetings on international development. “We’ve had a pro-choice consensus in this area for a couple of generations and we want to hold it.”

Last year they had another go at it, insisting that Conservative MP Stephen Woodworth’s effort to form a committee to study the Criminal Code definition of human life was just another surreptitious attempt to slip an abortion law past unsuspecting Canadians.

“Tell Harper: hands off our reproductive rights,” urged a Liberal petition. “On April 26, Conservatives will re-open the abortion debate on a woman’s right to choose. Unless you speak up.”

And just this week the latest Liberal leader, Justin Trudeau, somehow got confused between backbenchers wanting the right to speak their mind, and the sanctity of no one, anywhere, ever, raising doubts that women should be able to abort anything they want. whenever they want, for any reason they want.

“[I’m] committed to giving MPs more freedom to represent Canadians, but MPs would be required to support Canadians’ fundamental rights,” he responded when questioned. “For me, a woman’s right to choose is a fundamental right.”

So Liberals have undeniably established themselves as the party that believes Canadians shouldn’t be allowed to debate abortion under any circumstances, because the right to do that would interfere with the right they don’t want debated. (Make sense?). They have tried repeatedly to peddle the theory of a Tory conspiracy despite the prime minister stating clearly that it won’t happen under his watch:

“Very clearly I am against reopening that debate,” he said in April 2011. “That is my position, now and in the past five years as well, and as long as I am prime minister, we will not reopen the debate on abortion. We will leave the law as it stands.”

Now Mr. Harper has pushed his own caucus to the edge of revolt to make the point that he will take no action on abortion. He’s put his pledge up against charges that he’s undermining the rights of elected MPs to speak freely on their own views. And he’s forced the Speaker to make a historic ruling affirming their right.

It’s incomprehensible that even the most blinkered Harper-haters will continue to maintain it’s all part of the plot. What has become eminently clear is that a substantial faction of the Conservative caucus feels very strongly about abortion, to the point it is willing to challenge the prime minister and jeopardize their own standing within caucus, but that Mr. Harper views the issue as so potentially disruptive that he’s not willing to bend, even a the risk of his relations with party colleagues and the social conservative wing of Torydom.

That’s pretty compelling evidence. So maybe now they conspiracy theorists will shut up already.